That is the way when one of these groups of symptoms is removed; constipation may be removed by physic; liver symptoms may sometimes be removed temporarily by a big dose of calomel; ulcers can be so stimulated that they will heal up; but the patient is not cured. Hahnemann says it is strange that the physician cannot see that the removal of these symptoms is not followed by cure, that the patient is worse off for it.
Some patients are not sufficiently ill to see immediately the bad consequences of the closure of a fistulous opening but if a patient is threatened with phthisis, or is a weakly patient, the closure of that fistulous opening of the anus will throw him into a flame of excitement and will cause his death in a year or two. The more rugged ones will live a number of years before they break down. and they are held up as evidences of cure.
Such treatment is not based upon principles, and close observation will convince a thoughtful man of its uselessness and danger. The fistulous opening came there because it was of use, and probably if it had been permitted to exist would have remained as a vent until the patient was cured. When the patient is cured the fistulous opening ceases to be of use, the necessity for it to remain open has ceased and it heals up of itself.
The Organon condemns on principle the removal of external manifestations of disease by an external means whatever. A psoric case is one in which there is no external or traumatic cause. The patient perhaps has the habit of living as nearly an orderly life as it is possible for anyone to assume at the present day, going the regular rounds of service, using coffee and tea not at all or only in small quantity, careful in diet, removing all external things which are the cause of indispositions,. and yet this patient remains sick.
The signs and symptoms that are manifested are the true impress of nature, they constitute the outwardly reflected image of the inward nature of the sickness. “Now as in a disease from which n manifest exciting or maintaining cause has to be removed we can perceive nothing but the morbid symptoms, it must be the symptoms alone by which the disease demands and points to the remedy suited to relieve it.”
Hahnemann’s teaching is that there is a use in this symptom image, and that every curable disease presents itself to the intelligent physician in the signs and symptoms that he can perceive. In viewing a long array of symptoms an image is presented to the mind of an internal disorder, and this is all that the intelligent physician can rely upon for the purpose of cure.
This divides Homoeopathy into two parts, the science Homoeopathy and the art of Homoeopathy. The science treats of the knowledges relating to the doctrines of cure, the knowledge of principle or order, which you may say is physiology; the knowledge of disorder in the human economy, which is pathology (that is, the science of disease, not morbid anatomy), and the knowledge of cure.
The science of Homoeopathy is first to be learned to prepare one for the application of that science, which is the art of Homoeopathy. If we cast our eyes over those who have been taught, self-taught or otherwise, we see that some can learn the science, become quite famous and pass excellent examinations, and are utterly unable to apply the science, or, in other words, to practice the art of healing, for all healing consists in making application of the science.
We study disease as a disorder of the human economy in the symptoms of the disease itself. We also study disease from the symptoms of medicines that have caused disorder in the economy. Indeed, we can study the nature and quality of disease as much by studying the Materia Medica as by studying symptoms of disease, and when we cannot fill our time in studying symptoms from sick folks it is well to use the time in studying the symptomatology of the Materia Medica.
True knowledge consists in becoming acquainted with and understanding the nature and quality of a remedy, its appearance, its image and its relation to man in his sickness; then by studying the nature of sickness in the human family to compare that sickness with symptoms of the Materia Medica. By this means we become acquainted with the law of cure and all it leads that it leads to, and formulate doctrines by which the law may be applied and made use of, by arranging the truth in form to be perceived by the human mind.
This is but the science and we may, notwithstanding, fail to heal the sick. You will observe some, who know the science, go out and make improper application of the remedies, and seem to have no ability to perceive in a remedy that which is similar to a disease. I believe if they had a candid love for the work they would over come this, but they think more of their pocket books. The physician who is the most successful is he who will first heal for the love of healing, who will practice first for the purpose of verifying his knowledge and performing his use for the love of it.
In 1881, Kent accepted a position as professor of anatomy at the Homeopathic College of Missouri, an institution with which he remained affiliated until 1888. In 1890, Kent moved to Pennsylvania to take a position as Dean of Professors at the Post-Graduate Homeopathic Medical School of Philadelphia. In 1897 Kent published his magnum opus, Repertory of the Homœopathic Materia Medica. Kent moved to Chicago in 1903, where he taught at Hahnemann Medical College.